


wrecked land, and hope

by AnOddSock, saintsurvivor



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angelic Grace, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Developing Relationship, Emotionally Hurt Sam Winchester, Gen, Hopeful Castiel (Supernatural), Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Depression, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Religious Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester and Mental Health Issues, Self-Esteem Issues, Strained Relationships, Unspecified Setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2021-01-30 16:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21431161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnOddSock/pseuds/AnOddSock, https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsurvivor/pseuds/saintsurvivor
Summary: On his good days, Sam wears a necklace of grace around his throat.For the Sastiel Reverse Bang; Art by the amazingAnOddSock
Relationships: Castiel/Sam Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 73
Collections: Sastiel Reverse Bang 2019





	wrecked land, and hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnOddSock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnOddSock/gifts).

> **Author's Note #1:** Hi Guys, this is something for the [Sastiel Reverse Bang](https://sastielbb.tumblr.com/)! I managed to get the completely wonderful and amazingly talented [AnOddSock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnOddSock) as my artist!!  
**Author's Note #2:** They've been absolutely wonderful to me, especially considering this is my first time ever doing something like this, so most of this credit is definitely all theirs!  
**Author's Note #3:** You can find us both on tumblr, as [saintsurvivor](https://saintsurvivor.tumblr.com) and [oddsocksandstuff](https://oddsocksandstuff.tumblr.com) respectively  
**Author's Note #4:**: And here is the [**Art Masterpost**](https://oddsocksandstuff.tumblr.com/post/189058279606).

I know your strength of spirit. I want you to be with me,

**-Dacia Maraini**, from _ “Only Prostitutes Marry in May,” _wr. c. August 1994

His room is dark.

Barely illuminated apart from the small golden lamp that sits on his desk, Sam stares up at the dark ceiling with blank eyes. He’s counted the cracks in it, but the number always seems to slip away. This far away from everything, this deep down below the dirt where he’d never thought he’d be again, he cannot hear the bells of the chapel from the nearby town. He hears very little, apart from his heartbeat in his ears, and the deep groan of pipes and the gargle of the water. It used to be startling, discerning.

Now, he’s far too used to it, for all that he doesn’t want to be. His heartbeat helps.

Sam has never dealt well with silence, nor the darkness, and this is a bad day, where Sam wants little more than to curl beneath his blankets. To listen to the beat of his heart and pretend that someone else is with him because sometimes the loneliness starts to hurt. But it’s hard, because for all he longs for someone, he can't stomach them near him.

But Dean is right around the corner, waiting, and Sam has long since become used to disregarding his own needs. They have a hunt planned, and to Dean, nothing is more important than the hunt. Since their father’s death, since Cold Oak, Lucifer - since everything in between, Dean has slowly been pulling away, lost. A ship unanchored on a stormy sea, and Sam wants nothing more than to have his brother here, with him.

The darkness presses in on him, and the golden shine from his lamp flickers. He closes his eyes, feels the soft imprint of it against his eyelids. He wants to sleep, but sleep is a dangerous occupation for him these days.

It always has been, but the cold darkness creeps up on him, chokes him with tendrils that he can’t see. Sleeping is nothing more than lying awake with his eyes closed, waiting for the cold rake of claws across his soul. 

He opens his eyes, doesn’t think he can stand to feel the darkness pressing in on him for any longer that it has too. He’s never been afraid of the dark, no, but a lot of the things in the dark hunt him as he hunts them. A candle lit, stuttering in the wind. He is prey, predator. Everything he never wanted to be.

Someone bangs on the door, heavy handed. Dean yells through the wood and Sam pretends he doesn’t hear the worry in his tone, the way his voice wavers just that much. He knows Dean well, sometimes even better than he knows himself.

“C’mon Sammy, up n’ at ‘em, kiddo,” He says, muffled as it is through the heavy door. “This funky ass monster ain’t gonna bust itself.”

Sam says nothing, content to simply stare at the shadowed ceiling, counts the grooves; disregards the sick play of ribs beneath his own skin. He is as formless as he is formed.

He knows he’ll go. Of course he will.

The lamp flickers, burnished gold in the shadows of the desk. Sam doesn’t even look at it. It shakes with the force of Dean pounding on the door once more.

“Sam-” He says, muffled. He sounds like he wants to say more, but can’t quite fit the words in his mouth. They get stuck to his teeth, instead. So, Dean sighs, and Sam listens to the buzz of the lamp.

It’s an effort to stand, feels like he’s sunk deep beneath the waves of something he can’t quite name. Dean knocks the door again, tired, frail. String pulled too tight in opposite directions, witchfire blaze beneath his belly. 

“Dean.” Sam says. The light blinds him, door heavy against his shoulder. Dean’s face is brighter than even the electric bulbs swinging overhead. He looks ecstatic, overjoyed.

Sam can hear the tolling of chapel bells, as vague and faint as the mist over the river. Something hazes across his eyes, sheet-lightning that isn't.

He doesn't feel so alone, now.

The I-135N is long and winding, buffeted by the winds that cradle the car. Their windows are tightly shut, peering through the rain that’s slowly petering off. Metallica is playing on the sound system, radio this time instead of tapes. Dean’s tapping his hands on the worn leather of their first cradle.

It smells like blood, and bleach. Sam wants to swallow it down in lieu of coffee, of water. The sound of the guitar is really the only thing that breaks the silence.

_ “...running red and strong, down the nile…” _

Dean hasn’t looked at Sam for the longest of time now. Sam’s counted. It’s stupid, but something is lurking beneath his skin, sits up like a beaten dog and _ watches _. Maybe it’s the smell of blood, the grit of violence in the anchor of his teeth. 

_ “...darkness three days long _…”

The rain has stopped, and something glistens in his chest. Dean turns his head, and Lucifer looks upon him, tundra bright and tundra cold. Blood in his mouth and ash on his tongue. Grace bright and burning, Sam is drowning in himself. The world has turned upon itself and Sam is- _Sam is_-

He blinks, and Dean blinks back. Sam turns to face the front windscreen. He watches as the last of the raindrops is smeared across the blacktop. He blinks, and the headlights on the other side of the road blinks back. He cannot hear the toll of chapel bells now.

Dean glances at him from the corner of his eyes, but says nothing. Instead, Sam looks down, ducks his head, hides. Reads the file they'd put together from the information they'd been able to gather. _Demons_.

Even now, something in the back of his throat, in the deepest, darkest pits of his belly, something awakes and _twists_.

When Holly Golightly’s _ Devil Do _ comes on the radio, Sam switches it off. Dean does not glance at him, does not say anything.

They sit in silence, but for the thunder of Sam’s heartbeat, and the way his joints crack as he twists his fingers.

The exorcism is by rote. Every word has been memorized, it drips off the tongue like nothing ever has. Exorcisms are Sam’s burden, his way of counting seconds to minutes to hours. Instead of thinking, he watches a man convulse, coughing and choking on black smoke, without heartbeat and already grave cold, though his body doesn’t know it yet. Dean watches wearily, demon knife in hand. 

The warehouse is vast and wide, a high ceiling that Sam’s voice carries through every crevice, through every vent. Even the moonlight has been welcomed in, bright and shining, neon glowing in the darkness surrounding them. Above them, the velvet sky doesn’t seem to touch them, and as they watch the demon be exorcised back into the arms of Hell, Sam wonders when Dean with a knife became so terrifying to him.

As they watch, the man coughs once, twice; another time and then collapses onto the worn warehouse floor, pallid and grey with death without a demon puppeting him. Perhaps it would have been better to let Dean stab the man, kill the demon and the man, not that it really matters with the man already gone, but they rely far too much on the knife. He remembers, all those years ago, when demons were rare, and they still stumbled on the exorcisms.

Those memories are a million years and too many lifetimes away, more than just hyperbole to Sam. Things are different, _ they _ are different, Dean just doesn’t seem to understand that.

Sam steps away from Dean, stepping carefully over the devil’s trap that they’d manage to trap the man into it. It’s unbroken, even on the uneven ground he’d had trouble spray painting it onto. Dean holds back, face illuminated in blocks by the moonlight falling into the breaking down roof.

“Suppose it’s time to get the shovels.” Dean says, whistling even as he tucks the demon killing knife into belt. Sam sighs, looking down at the nameless man, seeing the unrising chest, the glazed over eyes; even after all this time, it never gets easier, caught in the shadow of the chapel as they are.

“I’m so sorry,” He says quietly, kneeling to lift the man’s body as gently as he could. “I wish we could have helped you more than this.”

The man does not speak, dead and cold as he is. Sam keeps his silence too, instead carrying the heavy burden of his death upon his shoulders into the clear, night sky.

The chapel is small, almost intimate, and Sam likes to listen to the bells sat atop it like they’re a lullaby only for him. It’s dark, as dark as the deep indigo sky that had fallen around Lebanon several hours before, and here, there are no neon lights; here, there are no street lights. There is only the soft golden flicker of candles, the sweet glance of the moon.

Christ looks down upon him, silent and pained. Strung up and left alone, Sam kneels beneath his carved form, lights a single candle. The altar spreads out before him, just as cold, just as silent. It’s two in the morning, and Sam is the only soul around.

From beneath his shirt, silver grace gleams, bright and burning.

The skies are bruised, blackened and pregnant with rain that Sam knows will fall soon, but here, here nothing seems to touch him. For Sam, that is an unusual thing. He has long since become unused to safety, to warmth that permeates his bones.

Coldness is the one thing that Sam has known for longer than he can say, and down beneath the dirt where he never wanted to be, coldness became one with him, icebitten, fused. He stays silent, does not pray for the moment. Rosesweet griefwater, the chapel is silent as the grave. Death comes a-creeping, and Sam has been touched far more than anyone should have been.

Instead, he looks up at the silent figure of Christ. Sees the pained gaze, and the rictus of agony upon his face, bone ache and soul deep. Nails and thorns, blood and torture, Sam has always felt close to the Son, but seeing Him; crucified, alone, Sam has never felt more kindred to anyone. Lucifer was not merciful, and Sam had not expected him to be.

Penance, he thinks.

The only way Lucifer would have been merciful would have been the way he’d gently cupped a hand around Sam’s cheek, had pressed his lips to Sam’s and bid him to swallow poison in lieu of choking.

He closes his eyes, balls his hands into fists that almost hurt. Imprinted on the black of his eyelids, Christ stares down upon him, golden hued, as silent as his heartbeat.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” He says softly. Opens his eyes, bends his head until his vision is filled with golden candles, the soft glow of grace emanating from his chest. It’s warm, almost unnaturally so, beneath his hand. It feels like sheet-lightning in a bottle. “Dean thinks I’m slowly going mental, I think. He hasn’t quite figured out what’s going on between Castiel and I, but it’s only a matter of time, isn’t it?”

Silence is his only answer, but something, sweet and warm and electrified, wells up in the pit of his belly, aching almost. He doesn’t mind the darkness, or the silence so much now. He isn’t alone, not truly anyway. 

He keeps his head bowed, even as he clenches his eyes shut. Christ’s gaze is still a heavy weight upon his shoulders, but no longer is it so burdensome.

“Dean-” He stops, pauses. Saying this out loud would be giving voice to every doubt he’s had about his brother for awhile, and once it’s been spoken it can never be taken back. But this has been weighing on him, an albatross around his throat that chokes him more than Dean’s anger ever could. “Dean would think I was leaving him. Maybe it’s unfair to him, but he would think that - and. And after everything, I’m just so _ tired _ of having to watch my back around him-”

He breaks off, voice exhausted for all that his body is wide awake. The moon shifts from behind it’s cover of cloud for a moment, and one brilliant shaft of silver light beckons from the stained glass windows. Christ’s s eyes are alight, brushed empty silver in the gloom. 

“I’m just so _ tired _.” He whispers, as soft as something like him could ever manage. He closes his eyes, presses his palms into them, feels the catch of his scar against the delicate skin. Penance is pain, and pain is holy, but the slim vial of grace around his throat seems to think different.

His eyes open, hands falling to the vial.

It warms up, hotter than even before. Unnatural, hot like the sun on a too warm Kansas day, prayer-hand flat open fields; no shade to think of. It brandishes the golden hues of the candles away, replaces them with silver, silver like the moonlight, silver like the chain around his throat, silver like-

The candles burn out, white wax melting down burnished gold, in the wake of fluttering wings. It’s only between the beat of a heart, the flicker of an eye, but something stands in the darkness. Silver eyes, full of grace, sheet lightning that isn’t crackling down his spine.

Castiel steps out of the darkness, and into the light.

“You’re wearing it.” He says, softly. His grace bright eyes burn silver, brighter than even the moonlight coming through the stained glass window, fractured. Shattered. Angelic helix rituals.

He turns his gaze away, away from Castiel’s too knowing eyes. Turns from his gaze, the softness of his expression, and instead looks down. He can feel the stone of the chapel floor digging into his knees, imprints that he’s so used to that he’s almost half worn them into his bones by now. Evidence of faith, or penance, maybe.

But he can feel Castiel’s grace burnt gaze, and the darkness seems to have fled. Even Christ’s eyes no longer feels so torturous upon his shoulders, no longer an insurmountable burden. Darkness has fled and light has given way, bright, burning.

Beneath the eyes of the men he has the most faith in, Sam runs a reverent hand down the thin vial, barely the size of his pinky, hanging on the chair around his throat. It glows still, as silver as Castiel’s eyes, brighter than even the moon. The burnt out candles waft out smoke, eclipsed by the brightness of grace, effervescent as it is.

“It’s a good day.” Sam tells the twisted figure of Christ. Eyes no longer on the floor, but on that thorn crown across Christ’s forehead. “You gave it to me and-” His throat closes up. He can’t seem to put into words all the things he’d like to say. Castiel always seems to make him speechless.

He doesn’t see Castiel move, only feels a hand, calloused but still so tender, touch upon his shoulder, thumb brushing his jaw for the slightest of moments. His heart lurches. Castiel is in front of him, silver backlight, and he shivers, feels that same pull of _ something _ deep beneath his gut.

“I’m glad.” Is all that Castiel says. His voice is almost reverent, and it makes Sam’s heart thunder. He doesn’t know what he’s done to make Castiel sound like that, or why his heart seems to be trying to escape through his skin, but as Castiel’s hand sweeps up his neck, curling around his jaw with the most gentle touch Sam has ever known, nothing about that matters.

What matters is this; Castiel standing before him, grace burnt and loving, everything Sam has ever wanted.

After, Castiel kneels too, falls to his knees against the stone chapel floor, graceful in all the ways a human body never should be. His hands are on Sam’s jaw, cupping his face. Sam can count every eyelash, every freckle, ever stubble hair. His chest barely moves. Castiel’s eyes have never been so silver, so gilded. The pupil is barely there, grace white wash of colour swallowing it whole.

They look at each other, silent, intimate. Slowly, burning, tears arise, hot down the frigid cold of Sam’s cheeks. Castiel thumbs them away, and Sam watches him exhale, inhale. His very breath is grace, sheet lightning electric, hurricane wind wild.

In that moment, between the beat of a heart, the pregnant indigo skies splits, and the rain starts thundering down. Angelic weeping, heavens torn asunder. Mouth to mouth, do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation, drowning on dry land.

They are born anew, grace burnt, soul divine. Out of the darkness, into the light.

I carry my home inside me.

**-Miklós Radnóti**, from _ “All That Still Matters at All _”


End file.
